Expanding the NCAA Tourney
- Thread starter BIG BLUE GURU
- Start date
It never seizes to amaze me how people think they can make something better. March madness is the greatest sporting event ever. Keep pushing and they will ruin its dynamics just like NASCAR did and then they lost so many loyal viewers.
Absolutely not. This is a horrible idea. It’s hard enough to win a title with 68 teams.
WildcatfaninOhio
All-American
Completely agree. Instead of expanding, it should go back to 64.
It's not about "making something better," it's about making more money.
Also from the article, "He said the tournament is unlikely to grow any bigger than 76 because of the limited window they have to schedule games between the time when conference championships end and coverage of the Masters begins." Yeah... we'll see about that. I'm pretty sure I read something similar when they went to 68.
Yep. Gives room for all the small conference champs while allowing the top 4-8 of the power conferences
The argument for it besides pure financial considerations is that Division 1 has expanded quite a bit, so opening up a few more tournament spots still allows a similar percentage of teams to be invited. I’m not crazy about it though. Quite frankly, none of the new teams moving up a division are championship quality, and some mediocre teams already slip into a 68 team field. This would mostly just dilute the event.
It's all about money. Zero reason to do this otherwise. It's supposed to be an accomplishment to make the tourney.
They are going to expand. It is inevitable. So now they just need to figure out the way that makes the most sense. Right now there are two 11 seed matchups and two 16 seed matchups during the first four on Tuesday/Wednesday in Dayton. If they went to 72 teams they should probably do all four of the 11's and all four of the 16's. That would give you four games on Tuesday and four on Wednesday. They should probably even look at holding the first four (now first eight) in two separate sites. Play the east and south regional teams in Dayton and play the midwest and west teams somewhere further west to accommodate for travel. I don't even know what they would do if they expanded to 76. Play all the 12's? Or 15's?
You would have to get your brackets in waaayy early though.
JB
You would have to get your brackets in waaayy early though.
JB
